by Denise Mina
He turned stiffly to face her, a pale pink blush spreading over his neck and face. ‘No,’ he said, his eyes open wide, his bottom lip twitching. ‘Has Una had her baby yet?’
Liam looked confused and the blush receded. ‘No. What’s that to do with anything?’
Maureen smiled to herself. ‘Never mind,’ she said.
She’d definitely know if he was lying. ‘Ye know, that sort of poetic sorrow can be very seductive. If you like Siobhain at least make sure you fall for her, not just her tragic past.’
‘Maureen, I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ said Liam, and pulled out very fast into the street.
As she climbed the last weary flight of stairs Maureen felt certain she could hear Jim Maliano watching her through the spy-hole in his door. It was a horrible habit of his. She turned around and stared at the door, looking straight into the spy-hole, mouthing ‘Fuck off.’ She had said it ten times when she heard him creeping, tippy-toed, along the carpeted hall, a hand brushing the papered wall as he steadied himself. Inside her own door the answer-machine blinked at her. She went into the kitchen, unscrewed the lid from the whisky bottle and drank. It tasted like a longed for deep breath. She was going to get dead drunk tonight. The answer-machine had a message from Hugh McAskill, asking her to call him at home, and one from Kilty checking in to say hello. The last was the usual forlorn weekly message from Winnie.
When Winnie was drinking she was a shameless phone pest. Since Maureen had cut contact with her, Winnie could phone six, sometimes seven times in a day. Her personal best was a round and magnificent fifteen. Each time she rang she’d beat a different stage of drunkenness and sounded like a completely different person. Her moods ranged from heart-wrenching sadness to apocalyptic anger, and every call was aimed at getting Maureen to phone her back. Maureen had cut off nearly a year ago, when it had become clear that the family no longer believed that Michael had abused her. Winnie had gone to AA and got sober in the intervening period and now phoned once a week, every Friday at five o’clock when Liam would have told her that Maureen was still at work, and repeated the same three sentences: ‘I love you, I miss you, I want you to contact me.’ Maureen appreciated the kindness of phoning when she would be out. She found herself wondering about sober Winnie, fantasizing about talking to her, the two of them reminiscing about the good times. Liam was closer to Winnie now that he had softened and she was sober. He said she was deeply sorry for all the grief she’d caused but really didn’t understand the extent of it. Winnie was the funniest person Maureen’d ever met. She found herself imagining an idealized mother in place of Winnie and it became hard to remember what was true and what was fantasy. Liam told her that Winnie was almost prepared to consider the possibility that Michael had abused Maureen, and knew at least that it wasn’t a deliberate, malicious fabrication.
A sudden unfamiliar, officious-sounding knock at the door made her jump. She looked out of the spy-hole, expecting to see Aggie Grey, the woman with ££s to spare. It was a man, dressed formally in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, holding a brown envelope. He was slim with dyed blond hair and a badly sunburned face. The brown skin was peeling off his chin and neck, leaving patches of brilliant pink. His forearms were going as well and, as he waited for her to answer the door, he pulled a tin of Vaseline out of his pocket and rubbed it on his forearm. The skin came away beneath his fingers, rolling into greasy, grey little cigars. He made a disgusted face and brushed it on to the floor, picking at the bits stuck in the hairs. Maureen frowned at the door, wondering why Aggie Grey would send someone who looked like a courier. Suddenly it hit her: the illegal fags. It might be a warrant to search the house.
Maureen ran on tiptoe back into the kitchen and pushed the sleeves of cigarettes into the bottom of a cupboard, shoving empty poly-bags in front of them. The front door banged again. Panting, she stood up, shut the cupboard door and looked at it. The man chapped again, faster this time, more impatient. She picked up a chair carefully, trying not to make a noise, and sat it in front of the cupboard door, stepping back to look at it, hoping it looked natural. She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t remember what natural looked like. He knocked again.
‘Coming,’ she shouted, trying to sound casual. She could say the fags were for her own consumption, that she’d been abroad recently and had bought them. Calmer, she brushed her hair from her face, stepped out to the hall and opened the door. ‘Can I help you?’ she said, remembering that she didn’t know where the fags were from. If she said she’d been to Greece and they were from France he’d know she’d lied.
‘Miss Maureen O’Donnell?’ he said suspiciously.
‘Yes.’ Maureen stepped out on to the landing and pulled the door closed behind her, realizing, too late, how shifty it made her look.
‘You took your time,’ he said, giving her a sidelong glance. She looked straight at him ‘It’s my time to take,’ she said stiffly, and wondered what it meant.
The man looked puzzled for a moment. ‘I’m here to deliver this,’ he said, handing her the envelope.
Maureen took it. It wasn’t sealed at the back so it came open easily and she took out a small sheet of paper. It had her address on it but it didn’t seem to be a warrant. ‘What is this?’ she said.
‘It’s a witness citation.’
She read the letter. She was invited to appear for the prosecution at HMA – v.–Farrell. The start date was only a week away. Maureen couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Angus again. She imagined him standing up in the dock, shouting across the court to her, something about Michael that only the two of them would understand, something calculated to fuck her up for months afterwards. She shook her head, trying to hand it back, but the man held up his hands. He said she couldn’t give it back now that she had it. When she asked why he smirked at her. ‘Because it’s a citation,’ he said.
He was laughing at her and she had no idea why. ‘What is a citation?’ she asked.
‘Don’t ye know?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘It means that ye have to come to court on the day it says.’ He jerked his head at the sheet, ‘Just turn up and wait and you’ll get called.’ ‘What if I don’t want to?’
‘Ye have to,’ said the red man. ‘You’ll go to prison if ye don’t.’
Maureen’s heart sank. ‘Prison?’
‘Aye,’ he said confidently. ‘They’ll do it as well – they sent a woman last week.’
‘For not wanting to go? What if you’re scared?’
‘Still send ye,’ he said, as if he didn’t approve either.
They stood in the chilly close, Maureen imagining herself in black and white, raising birds and fashioning chivs out of spoons, the peeling man wondering if he was cut out for this job or should go back to filing at the DSS. She looked at his forearm. ‘Ye shouldn’t use Vaseline,’ she said, pointing at the pink patch. ‘Use after sun. It’ll cool the skin down.’
‘What’s wrong with Vaseline?’
‘Too heavy, your skin can’t breathe.’
The man looked at his raw arm. ‘Is that right? What about calamine?’
‘Aye, calamine’s good but messy on your clothes. After sun’s better.’
‘Aye, cheers, anyway,’ he said, and walked away downstairs.
He stopped on the first landing. ‘By the way, Joe McEwan says he’ll see ye there.’
Maureen shut the door and dropped the letter to the floor, taking the whisky bottle back into the living room, thinking of all the different sides to Angus. Angus the kind therapist who had made her think for the first time since hospital that she might have a life and a future. Angus as Douglas used to talk about him, the competitive edge, the small defeats and gains between them. The aftermath of Angus, dead Douglas in the living room, his blood everywhere and Martin Donegan on the floor of his little cupboard hidey-hole, his blood black and silky beneath her feet. And the
n the epiphany: Angus turning up on the ferry to Millport, coming for Siobhain, coming to kill her to tidy up the details of his rapes in the Northern Psychiatric Hospital. She didn’t want to see him because of what he had said to her in the room, about Michael, about the dreams. But if she didn’t turn up they’d send her to prison and Una’s baby would have no protection from Michael.
She sat on the window-sill, drinking from the bottle, felt the warm sun on her face, a gentle breeze licking her hair. She had been deferring the decision about Michael and now the possibility of going to prison made it more urgent. She had to make up her mind and do it within the next week. It was all coming to an end. She knew now that deferring was just a game. These undecided days had been the most content and precious she could remember. She remembered sitting in the garden of the Northern Psychiatric Hospital with Pauline, pressing the flat of their palms together as they passed a lit cigarette from one to another, Pauline’s hands larger than Maureen’s but stick thin. Her skin was see-through.
Maureen turned her face to the sun, letting golden glory tears roll down her face. She wasn’t going to abandon the child to fate, whatever happened, whatever Sheila said.
12
Twice Rice
Her head was aching at the back, a dull hangover pain reminding her that there were good things in life, like drink and more drink. While washing her face, she found a painful inch-long bruise under her chin and a parallel bruise on her forehead, just above her eyebrows. She was trying to remember the night before and work out where on earth the bruises could possibly have come from when the postie’s tired feet tramped up the stairs. She heard him stop, flick through some letters, and watched one slip through and drop on to the mat. Maureen picked it up and opened it.
It was a cheap brown envelope containing a small printed sheet telling her when and where to turn up for the small claims case. It was due to be heard the following Friday at two thirty in the afternoon. Ella McGee’s name wasn’t even on the letter. Maureen tutted. She knew she’d filled in the bloody form properly. If she met creepy Si McGee again he’d think she was suing him, implying a relationship between them, suggesting the necessity of contact. She decided to go to the hospital that afternoon and tell Ella when the case was, then have nothing more to do with either of them.
She looked around the tiny hall. She wanted to get out of the flat. She was pulling the front door open before she had finished her first fag of the day. A small white envelope that had been sitting against the door flopped onto the toe of her trainer. She picked it up. There was no address on it. It was sealed at the back, the paper warped in a wide rim around the seal, as if it had been wetted with a brush or a cloth. She shut the door and stood in the hall looking at it. She ripped it open.
Inside was a laser-printed image in smudgy black and white on photocopy paper. It was a picture of a child of about eight, standing in a hallway. The girl’s eyes had been blanked out with a thick black line. She was crying, mouth open, lips and cheeks wet with tears, crying and looking up at the person taking the photograph of her. She was naked and cupping her little fanny protectively, her arms taut, her chest hunched nervously. Maureen shuddered and dropped the picture to the floor, stepping back to get away from it. The picture landed face up and the eyeless child was in her hallway, crying up at her.
Maureen looked into the envelope again but it was empty and it occurred to her that DNA could be taken from saliva. She crouched down and turned the picture over but there was nothing written on the back. The child was almost the same age she had been when she was abused. Angus Farrell would know that. It had been hand-delivered but she knew it had come from him: he was the only person who sent her threatening letters. Angus probably knew a whole network of freaks and weirdos in the city, people he would have met through his work, through his patients and through his own personal interests, any one of whom could have sent it. He was trying to upset her and he was succeeding.
She looked down at the picture again. The child’s pain seemed so immanent, the threat to her so urgent, that Maureen felt a rush in her stomach and flush on her cheeks.
She wanted to do something, run into the street and punch someone or something, take action and save the wee girl but the picture could be decades old. And all she could tell the police if she phoned them was that she had been sent a cheap photocopy of a picture of a girl who seemed upset. She crouched down by the picture and put her fingertip on the child’s hand.
Weeping, she picked up the picture by its edge and put it in the hall cupboard, facing the wall. She shut the door, resting her head on the frame, and decided to get out of the house.
As she pulled the front door open, her eye caught the wicker laundry basket sitting under the basin in the bathroom at the far end of the hall. Suddenly irritated by the innocuous item, she left the front door open, walked down the hall, emptied the basket on to the bathroom floor and carried it down the stairs. She threw it out of the back door, into the midden.
She bought a can of Coke in Mr Padda’s and put her shades on, sitting on the low wall outside her door between the jagged metal stumps, remnants of railings sawn off in the war. She smoked a cigarette and drank, watching for the van. She would go and see Ella McGee this afternoon, tell her about the date of the small-claims case and then wash her hands of it. Since she couldn’t talk about it in front of Si McGee she decided to dress up smartly and sneak in before the visiting hours started. She wasn’t going to think about the photograph or talk about last night’s citation until she’d spoken to Hugh McAskill. He’d tell her what it meant and what she should do about it.
Leslie arrived and, to Maureen’s astonishment, was upset about Cammy. They had spent the previous evening trying to settle who owned what in the flat but he kept crying and Leslie had had to restrain herself from comforting him in case he took it the wrong way. Maureen suspected that Cammy knew exactly what he was doing. Leslie chucking him out meant he’d have to go back and stay with his mum, pay digs money out of his giro and at least pretend to try to get a job.
The market was bustling with the Saturday crowd. They were different from the weekday punters, less purposeful and more likely to browse, but the takings could be good. Some of the stalls in their tunnel were only used on Saturdays. Punters wandered around in groups of two or three, silting up the market’s arteries. Foreign tourists came to the market on Saturdays because the tour guides wanted to fit in the Barras weekend market on the same day. It was a healthier crowd than during the week, when the underfed and under-privileged gathered together to trade reusable rubbish. They were unpacking the van and setting up the stall when Leslie started peering above Maureen’s eyes.
‘Mauri, you’ve got a wee mark there.’ She tried to rub off the tender bruise on Maureen’s forehead.
‘Stop it,’ said Maureen, slapping her hand away. ‘It’s a bruise.’
‘What is it?’ asked Leslie.
‘I dunno,’ said Maureen, and tipped up her chin. ‘Look. There’s another under here.’ ‘How did ye do that?’
‘I dunno. I must have done it when I was asleep.’
‘D’ye put your head in a vice when you’re sleeping?’ Maureen smiled and rubbed her forehead. ‘Aye, mibbi.’
Engaging with a person who wasn’t Cammy for thirty seconds had taken it out of Leslie. She looked down the tunnel to the bright lane. ‘Cammy bruised his big toenail at football. It’s still black. He did it months ago, as well.’
It was half eight in the morning and Maureen was already furious with everyone. She was angry with Leslie for not listening, angry with whoever had delivered the picture, angry at the thought of seeing Angus again and with that fucking laundry basket for taking up so much fucking space for so long. She thought of it sitting out in the dusty back court and hoped it would rain.
Leslie was red-eyed but standing firm. Maureen listened to her talk about Cammy, trying to care. She was angry, she could
feel it gnawing at the pit of her stomach. She tried breathing in deeply to dilute it, trying to bring her mind back to Cammy and the disputed ownership of an Orb album.
The market died off in the early afternoon. Leslie went to get the lunch and came back with bacon and egg rolls.
‘Getting sick of rolls every day,’ said Maureen, throwing hers, half eaten, to Elsie Tanner.
‘Yeah,’ said Leslie, licking runny yolk from the back of her hand, looking at her roll as if Maureen had taken the good out of it.
‘I got a letter this morning,’ Maureen said reticently. ‘Hand-delivered. I’m sure it’s from Farrell.’
‘How could he deliver it by hand?’ asked Leslie. ‘Isn’t he still in hospital?’
‘Aye, but I figure he probably knows someone. Gave them my address.’
‘What was the picture of?’
‘A wee girl, naked and crying.’
‘Fuck, Mauri, that’s creepy.’
‘It’s supposed to be,’ said Maureen, scratching her head. Maureen and Leslie took turns going for walks up and down the lane. After one walk Leslie came back looking shifty and carrying a Marks & Spencer food-hall bag. When she set it down the bag’s contents slid to the side, the top gaped open and Maureen saw two portions of chicken tikka and a double portion of rice. Leslie pushed the bag into her hold-all and sat down on her stool.
Maureen lit a cigarette as she walked down the lane to the river. The market ended at a disused iron bridge over the river. Greenery sprouted from between red riveted girders like the hairs on an old man’s ears. On a sofa in the shade of the bridge sat two drunk men with sun-baked faces, looking out at the rusting underbelly. One man watched her pass, smiling genially. His pal was either asleep or dead, slumped sideways at an improbable angle over the arm of the sofa.
She went into the Sutherland Vaults, a dingy pub painted black throughout. The Saturday drinkers were there, propped along the bar, looking as sober as the settee men. Around a blind corner a sad old song was being played on a fiddle, accompanied by the exhausted heartbeat of a bodhran.